Mythos
by elinorofealdor
Summary: The Doctor takes Lily to the Mediterranean sometime between 4,000-3,500 BCE. Neither one of them expect to meet anyone they know there, but the universe seems to have other plans. Rated M for (brief) scenes of violence. First chapter is Lily's history until now(ish); story begins in chapter 2.
1. Lily's History

Lily Connors is an Immortal, born in 1596 in Ireland but shortly after her sister's birth in 1598 the family moved to reunite with relatives in Scotland. After the death both of his first wife and her initial intended, she was betrothed to Duncan MacLeod before his untimely death. Distraught by the loss of a lifelong friend and husband-to-be, Lily and her sister traveled back to Ireland where they were both killed by marauders one night returning from a ball near Galway.

Lily awoke to her sister dead, and herself covered in blood, their bodies dumped off the side of the road. She was found by an immortal, Adamo, who claimed to be an Italian courtier travelling the isles. He was, in fact, Methos (the oldest living immortal, even then) and he took her under his care and tutelage. They fell in love, like you do, but Methos had never been with an immortal woman for more than a couple decades and Lily continually had a nagging feeling that Duncan was the man she was always intended for. When Lily received intelligence in the 1770s that Duncan was alive and immortal, she and Methos parted. However, due to other adventures, travels, events, etc, Lily didn't actually find Duncan until 1994. They reunited, and then Methos made his reappearance in her life less than two years later. Duncan and Lily as a couple did not last - they cared deeply for each other, but centuries apart living different lives brought them to the conclusion that they were not meant to be. Still, they remain close friends.

The connection between Lily and Methos, however, has always been undeniable - even when they try to deny it themselves. Then came the near-apocalypse with Kronos, epic romance engaged, and they lived more-or-less-happily ever after... (see story: Lost in Each Other)

Until the Doctor appears (see story: Entrapment). Well, more accurately until Lily is abducted by an alien collective who choose her for companion as appreciation for the Doctor saving the universe. A lot. As they dangle the lives of Methos, Duncan, and Lily agree to travel with the Doctor, she acquiesces rather than risk their lives. Whatdownsides choice is that they managed to select someone who is both what the Doctor needs, and what he wants. And she, in time, cannot ignore how drawn she is to him.


	2. Chapter 1

"So you're telling me you were there when Vesuvius erupted."  
"Not just there, made it happen."  
"Right. You caused Pompeii to be destroyed." The skepticism in her voice underplayed the curiosity. Though Lily and the Doctor had been traveling for nearly four years, she knew far from everything about him. His attempts at vagueness failed to silence her questioning (usually). Still, there remained centuries of each others' lives they had yet to learn and understand.  
"So what, you ignited a fireball or bomb of some sort?"  
"Sort of."  
"From where?"  
"Inside Vesuvius."  
Lily nodded, her lips pursed. "Mmmm-hmmm. And how exactly did you get inside Vesuvius?"  
"We were, ah, being chased."  
"By?" The Doctor's voice lowered. He refused to reduce himself to mumbling, but was very near to it. Lily took much of what he told her in stride (after all she'd seen by now what she hadn't seen she took on faith, and her trust in him), but he knew when she was getting skeptical. "Giant rock-lava beings... pyroviles."  
Lily raised an eyebrow. "Uh-huh." She said, her voice toning upwards on the 'huh' as if to say, "Riiiiiiiight."  
"Look, believe me or not, it's true. I'd take you there for proof but we might end up buried under several thousand tons of molten lava, and if that weren't the case we might end up on top of the largest pile of steaming ash in history."  
"Yeah, I'll pass." She came up beside him, wanting to wrap her arms around his waist, but refraining. On occasion she blurred the lines between platonic interactions and something more, later feeling guilty both for putting the Doctor in an awkward position and ceasing for a time, however brief, to forget or ignore the reason she was on this voyage in the first place. Something about this conversation turned him surly. Not on the surface, but this chat clearly struck a nerve.  
"You know, I do believe you," she stated, settling for putting one hand on his back as she stood next to him.  
He turned his head from the screen and looked down into her shining eyes. She gave him a half-smile, an apology for joking on a subject he cared not to joke about. Her instincts about him bordered on mind-reading at times, which worried him. He cleared all doubts and frustration from his mind. Her genuine apology deserved genuine forgiveness, and she would see it in his eyes if he didn't give it to her. "I know."  
He smiled at her, warm and friendly, and she returned the smile. He turned his head back to the screen. "Now, when we land, what should we see first?"  
The plan was to take her to see the Mediterranean in the days before it was torn by millennia of wars.  
"Well, that depends," she said with a playful note in her voice. "Are there going to be people around, or are you taking me back to Genesis?"  
It was a game they played when he told her either where or when they were headed, but not both. At times he shared the intended destination, or they decided together where to travel, but he also liked to surprise her. Seeing the expression on her face when she first beheld a new time and place, he felt the reveal through her and it gave him a reason to keep traveling. Not to mention how her wonder, joy, and fascination mesmerized him.  
He sighed, faking exasperation. "Yes, there will be people. Nice, civilized people who haven't really pinpointed the ideas of organized religion yet. At least not the concepts that include holy wars."  
"Oh goody, you're taking me to see the heathens." She winked at him, and he beamed back. The momentary awkwardness of the previous conversation no longer existed.  
Lily grabbed hold of one of the bars next to the main controls as the Doctor ran around banging and pounding bits of the Tardis into submission for landing. She giggled at his childlike way of manipulating the Tardis, knowing full well it would be a smoother ride if they both piloted, but whenever he wanted to keep their ultimate destination a secret he insisted on piloting alone. As the Tardis slammed into the ground, the Doctor slipped and tumbled back onto Lily, knocking them both to the ground. Laughing like a pair of children who ran down a hill and tumbled to the bottom with no marks to show for it, he leapt up and took Lily's hand, pulling her to standing and a brief embrace.  
"Sorry about that! Forgot the final stabilizers." He winked at her and she wondered for a second if he really did, or if his fall on top of her wasn't entirely an accident.  
She blinked away the thought as the Doctor ran to the door, a polite doorman waiting to perform his duty. She sauntered towards him, pausing at the threshold to offer him a small bow. He bowed in return as he said, "My lady, may I present the Bronze Age," and opened the door.  
"Thank you, my good man," she replied as she stepped out of the Tardis and onto well-packed sand.

No matter how many times she stepped into new place or time, it still seemed magical, nearly impossible. The Tardis had landed in a bustling 'street.' People milled about looking at merchandise being sold by nomad traders. As the Doctor stepped from the Tardis, closing the door, Lily inhaled the scent of the surrounding area. He loved how she always drank in a new place, smelling and tasting what it offered. Lily teetered for a second, relishing the scent of sand, linen, camels, smoking food and incense. Her eyes closed, she took a few tentative steps forward.  
The Doctor followed behind, his eyes darting between the merchants and buyers and Lily as she moved forward into the pedestrian-laden lane. Though he was aware of other smells around him, all his nose sensed was the smell of her. The scent of her hair and lotion, and her natural aroma, nearly intoxicated him whenever he allowed himself to smell them. She turned around to him abruptly and he had to mask the look of near ecstasy from letting her scent affect him.  
"Are you sure this is the Bronze Age?"  
Her genuine curiosity ignited him and he tried not to prattle on.  
"Well, near enough. Maybe a little earlier than I intended, but we're somewhere around thirty-five hundred B.C.E. I should think."  
They walked hand in hand down the lane, trading insights and jokes as they absorbed this new place.  
"And they're not all heathens, you know. Already there are monasteries and such. Not as they appear later, and they'll all be destroyed someday, but they exist."  
Lily knew most of this already, but enjoyed the sound of his voice. She nodded, half-listening to him. "Even at the start of civilization people need comfort and sanctuary, a home to come back to."  
"Exactly, and more than that, people to share certain beliefs with - Lily?" He felt a tug on his hand as she stopped walking. "What is it?"  
Her eyes fixed on a well a hundred yards away where a group of men talked. The Doctor felt her pulse quicken as her breathing slowed. She had a knack for sensing when something was about to go wrong, but this felt different. This felt like recognition, and cold fear.  
"Impossible," she breathed.  
The men at the well were engaged in heated discussion about something, and within a few seconds a fight broke out.  
"Stay here," the Doctor said in his best attempt at maintaining a firm yet caring tone. Though he regretted telling her to stay and leaving her standing alone, his sense of anti-violence kicked in and he rushed to the tussle.  
The men were arguing, calling each other names. As the Doctor stepped in to try and calm them down, a darker-skinned man jabbed a discreet knife towards another man. The target of the stab moved back quickly, though not quite fast enough. The dagger penetrated perhaps an inch into the man's right side. His grey eyes widened in surprise. When the Doctor put a hand out to separate the men, he barely touched the chest of the wounded one before the man darted past and began running. The Doctor struggled to hold the other men back, but as a crowd gathered he was able to subdue them enough to begin assessing the situation.  
Lily remained, standing in the street watching the whole exchange in a haze. When the grey-eyed man was stabbed, she gasped, her body flinching just as his did. When he fled from the crowd she knew she should run - back to the Tardis, off the street, anywhere but where she stood. Yet her body would not comply and so she stood exactly where she'd stopped as the man ran toward her. Others cleared a path as he ran, but she stood still. As he neared her, his eyes darted to her face. When their eyes connected Lily almost fainted, but then he grabbed her hand and pulled her with him. Without thinking, she followed.


	3. Chapter 2

"Alright now, calm down. He's gone. What's this all about?"  
The Doctor interrogated the men remaining at the well who calmed enough to listen to him for a moment.  
"He is a liar, and an impossible man," responded one of the men.  
The one with the bloodied dagger had moved behind the other two men with him, seething in silence.  
"Right. You want to clarify 'impossible' for me?" The Doctor huffed.  
Another man replied this time, his dark brown eyes mixed with fear and loathing. "He does not tire as the rest of us do. Though his pale complexion should bake in the sun and heat, though he drinks and eats less than us, he remains strong. Men stronger than him have died on our journey thus far, and yet he fares better than any. We have never seen anyone so resilient."  
"So you're trying to kill this man for staying alive?" The small crowd murmured disapprovingly. The Doctor ignored them. "Has he done anything to you? Brought and harm to you?"  
The men bowed their heads in defeat, except the one who pulled the dagger. He stepped forward now, hazel eyes shimmering in the late-morning sun. His defiant anger had returned. "No. He has fought to protect us, hid us cleverly against raiders. He is cunning. Yet he is not one of us. He is something... different."  
Though the man did not say it, the Doctor heard what lay behind the 'different.' To this man, and presumably his accomplices, 'different' in this case meant 'more.' And 'more' meant something possibly dangerous to these people, but potentially interesting to the Doctor.  
"Look, I don't know what sort of mission you're on, and I don't care. The man you just stabbed has helped you and has done nothing wrong, and you admit this. Now hear me: I have seen people so different it would make your minds explode. Different does not equate to bad or evil. It is, simply, 'different.' So if you continue to pursue this man you'll have to answer to me, and that is not something you want."  
The pitch of the Doctor's voice lowered as he said this, and when he finished speaking the men looked on him with such abject fear he almost laughed. However, his sincerity to protect the stabbed innocent held him in check. The three men stood facing the Doctor for a moment, contemplating his words. Finally, all three turned and walked off presumably the way they had come. The Doctor looked around the crowd, their expressions ranging from confusion to appreciation. He stopped a violent crime from escalating and rid the marketplace of the instigators. How he convinced the men baffled some, but the plain fact was now everyone could continue with their lives.  
As people dispersed, returning to their shopping and selling, the Doctor looked back to where Lily had been standing. Not seeing her, he began running back down the lane.

Lily followed the grey-eyed man through the marketplace in a trance. When he pulled her into an empty tent near the end of the row, she collapsed on her knees and released his hand. He stopped and turned to her; the apology and concern in his eyes almost caused her to break into sobs. However, her attention was drawn to the hand clutching his bleeding side. She reached toward him and he recoiled, but not fast enough.  
"I'm alright," he said, though he made no further move away from her.  
"Your blood-soaked shirt says otherwise." She raised his muslin shirt, revealing the wound. "It's not too deep, but it needs to be cleaned and stitched. I can do it in a few minutes."  
At this he did recoil. "Please, no."  
Lily looked up at him, mistaking the fear in his eyes as fear of her. "I'm not going to hurt you. That wound needs to be..."  
She stopped, frozen at the realization.  
"I'm sorry. I know you want to help, but the men out there, the ones who stabbed me, we've been traveling and they're not too keen on my resiliency. Not that I believe their suppositions that something is wrong with me, but I wouldn't want you to-"  
"Lily!"  
They both jumped at the calling voice. The grey-eyed man looked around the tent for a weapon, but Lily stopped him.  
"It's alright," she said in as soothing a tone as she could muster. "He's with me. He won't hurt you."  
The grey-eyed man seemed wary, but stood still, the stab wound appearing to finally affect him.  
Lily called out, "In here, Doctor."  
A few seconds later the Doctor swept into the tent, his eyes concerned yet blazing. Lily jumped in before he could start interrogating her erstwhile captor.  
"The wound isn't bad, but it's deep. He needs a few stitches, and I'm guessing to be somewhere not here."  
The grey-eyed man sank to his knees and then to sitting, obviously now in pain.  
"Doctor, would you go get your bag? Please?"  
Her 'please' was so entreating he nearly left, but he sensed something that worried him.  
"I'm not sure I should leave you alone," the Doctor replied, giving the 'patient' a circumspect eye. He leaned in to whisper to her, their charge now looking at his wound and groaning in pain. "He took you out of the street. He could have kept going."  
"No, he couldn't," she interrupted. "He needed to stop, and he didn't take me by force. I followed. I had to."  
"Why did you-"  
"Bag first. Explanations later." Her tone was beyond firm. She commanded him, and though he felt anxious about the entire situation, he could not deny her nor leave the man here alone to run off and possibly die. Not before he found out Lily's connection to him.  
"Alright," he said, standing up straight. "I'll get the bag." The Doctor looked at the man as Lily eased him back to lie flat. He moaned, clenching his jaw against the pain. Lily looked to the Doctor and nodded. Reluctantly, the Doctor left the tent.

Lily stared intently into the man's eyes. Eyes she knew all too well. Yet these eyes differed from her memories. They were younger, lighter, untouched by thousands of years of life. She knew this man, but not as a mortal.  
"I apologize for stealing you out of the street, though I did not expect you to come so easily."  
"Yes, well, I'm full of surprises." She smiled at him.  
"I am Methos."  
She tried not to flinch at his name.  
"And you are Lily... is that right?"  
She nodded, unable to speak for the moment for fear of bursting into tears.  
"And that man you're with, he's a physician."  
"Of sorts."She reached across his splayed body to a pile of linens. Pulling out a sheet, she began ripping pieces off it.  
"And his name?"  
"He's just the Doctor."  
"Is that how you know him?"  
She gritted her teeth. Even this young, and mortal, his inquisitiveness could be infuriating. "He's the Doctor. Plain and simple. That's how anyone knows him."

When the Doctor returned with the bag, Lily had prepped Methos for stitches. He lay on his back, shirt pulled up, as Lily held a piece of linen on the wound to slow the bleeding. Without a word the Doctor pulled out a bottle of alcohol, a needle and thread. As he threaded the needle, Lily took the alcohol. She looked the man in the eyes as she spoke, as full of compassion as the Doctor had ever heard her be.  
"This will hurt, but it will clean the wound."  
The man nodded, his eyes never leaving Lily's face. She poured some of the liquid onto a clean piece of linen and then squeezed it over the wound. Methos flinched and inhaled sharply, but did not cry out.  
Something in the way his eyes never left Lily made the Doctor uneasy. After holding the alcohol-soaked linen on the wound for a minute, she reached for the threaded needle. She seemed not to notice her shaking hand until the Doctor held her wrist.  
"I'll do it." He drew her gaze and held it, warning her to calm down.  
She nodded and took one of Methos' hands in her own. Shifting her gaze, she locked eyes with Methos. "The Doctor's going to stitch you up proper. If you need to, squeeze my hand." She smiled at him as he raised an eyebrow at her. "Trust me, I can take it."  
"Right then," the Doctor said as he readied to begin stitching. "This will hurt, but try not to flinch. A dozen stitches I'd say and that'll be all."  
Methos nodded, still fixed on Lily as if she were the one speaking.  
"Then you can tell us all about what brought you here and caused you to snatch my friend."  
"I - Aaaaaahhhhh!" Methos yelled in pain as the Doctor made his first pass with the needle.  
Lily shot the Doctor a look. He shrugged. "First one always hurts the most."  
She glared at him before turning back to Methos. She put a hand on his forehead to still him, and gulped at the heat emanating from him. As the Doctor continued stitching, Lily pulled another strip of linen and used it to wipe Methos' brow. He lay still, closing his eyes with the final few stitches. When he did, Lily cast the Doctor an uneasy look. After closing, Lily wrapped more linen around his waist and the wound area, tying it off as the Doctor packed up.  
As he was about to question Methos, she cut him off. "Doctor, can we talk outside for a moment?"  
The look she cast him did not ask. Nodding, he stepped out of the tent. Lily turned back to Methos whose breathing had become somewhat laboured.  
She ran her thumb over the back of his hand as she spoke. "We're going to step outside and try to find somewhere safe for you to go. Stay here?"  
Once again, her question was only punctuated for show. Like the Doctor, Methos picked up on it and was too weak (and more than a little curious about why she seemed to care for him) to argue.  
"Yes," he murmured, but added as she rose to leave, "At some point I'd like to know why you didn't fight me... you just followed."  
"I have faith that the universe takes me where I'm supposed to be," she said, stepping out into the sunlight and blinking away tears.

She took a deep breath before walking a few paces to where the Doctor stood. His face was commanding, expectant, the face he used to demand explanation. Though it made others nervous or terrified to look into those eyes, and urged them to confess, Lily had been with him long enough to develop somewhat of an immunity and in this particular circumstance she had little desire to tell him the truth, for now at least. Fighting the urge to cry, her response followed that of many overwhelmed by emotion. She laughed.  
His eyes darkened, thinking that she laughed at him, but when she opened her eyes, still giggling, he saw the turmoil just below the surface. Rather than chide her, he put a hand on her head and smoothed her hair. "So, are you going to tell me?"  
Lily stopped laughing and sighed. "Not yet." Her face was serious again.  
"I will, but not now, and don't cheat by asking him. He can't tell you anything." She added with a bemused scowl, "And he's inquisitive enough."  
"Spoilers?"  
She scrutinized his expression, looking for signs that he'd figured out what she was avoiding.  
Seeing none, she replied, "Something like that. He needs to be taken somewhere safe, a temple or something."  
"Already ahead of you." She raised an eyebrow. "While I was getting the bag, I used the Tardis to scan for settlements. There's a temple just north of here, about two miles over a couple hills and through some woods."  
"You got all of that from the Tardis?" She mused skeptically.  
"Well, I might have asked someone on the way back."  
"Good on you then, mister resourceful. Let's go."  
The Doctor tugged her sleeve, pulling her back to him. "Hold on a moment, Lily. You know he's hurt." She knew, and in the glance she threw him when she felt how hot Methos' head was he knew it, too. "It isn't just the knife."  
She nodded. "It was poisoned, wasn't it."  
"Yes."  
Lily flinched, but kept stability in her voice. "How long?"  
"A few days most likely. I can use the blood on the needle to analyze it and we may be able to stop it, or at least slow it down, but Lily-"  
She put a finger on his lips. "No. No 'but's right now. One thing at a time. Let's get him to this temple and then you can come back to the Tardis to analyze and find something to help."  
He didn't want to press her further, but still felt unsettled. He held her hand, looking into her eyes for assurance that she would tell him what she knew, preferably before it got them into too much trouble. "You know if I didn't trust you wholeheartedly, and you know what it means for me to say that, we wouldn't still be here."  
She stared back into his eyes, daring him to cross her. "And if I didn't trust you, we never would have come here at all."  
Her words stung him and he had no response for her. Apparently she didn't require one. Lifting her heels, she stretched up to kiss his cheek. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer for an embrace. Reflexively hugging her in return, she whispered in his ear. "I trust you, as much as I've ever trusted anyone. No matter what you hold back from me, I will always trust you, so long as you trust me."  
Pulling away, she waited for his response. He stepped back and took in the sight of her. No one outright asked for his trust, and no one had ever been more deserving of it. He did trust her, completely, he just didn't hold with telling people how he really felt. However, as became apparent over these past few years, Lily wasn't 'people,' she was her unique self. The Doctor brushed back a strand of her hair, then took one of her hands.  
"I'm sorry. You're right." Feeling an urge stir deep inside he knew should be resisted, he relented to her will. "We'll do this however you want."  
"Thank you," she said, finally smiling at him. He would do nearly anything for that smile. "I promise, when the time is right, I'll tell you. Just please don't badger me about it until then."  
"All right," he agreed. "To the temple then?"  
Lily nodded. "To the temple."


End file.
